JREF Swift Blog

As a big fan of you and the JREF, it was with some interest that I looked for Ebert's review of Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", but the movie was released (April 18, 2008) without a peep from Ebert - which I thought quite strange for a movie that had such inflammatory material. It turns out that he waited until almost 8 months later to write/publish his review - and you can certainly see why if you read it. I didn't see any mention of it on your website and though it's somewhat belated, I thought it's important enough to point out to your readers. Here's the link if you're interested.

And I do recommend you read it. It's a very long and indepth review, and though it perpetuates the myth that Darwin discovered evolution (evolution as a concept had been around for a very long time... Darwin's contribution was a thorough explanation of natural selection), it's a thorough analysis of a film made to be propaganda. Consider this one paragraph:

This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.

I think that about sums it up. Ebert is clearly on "our side" in this issue, and it's refreshing to see someone in the popular media tell it like it is. If only Ben Stein would.